Homegrown Radicals: A Story of State Violence, Islamophobia, and Jihad in the Post-9/11 World

The powerful story of how the War on Terror created the conditions for the emergence of a novel theory of jihad

The post-9/11 period saw the emergence of the figure of the homegrown radical Muslim, raising fears and worries about the possibility of an enemy exceptionally capable of harming and destabilizing the nation-state. Against this figure of the radical stood that of the moderate Muslim who represented the possibility of national unity despite religious and racial differences.

In Homegrown Radicals, Youcef Soufi brings the radical and moderate Muslim together in uneasy tension, offering a study into how state violence inextricably tied them together in post-9/11 Canada and the US. By focusing on the radicalization of three Muslim students on the Canadian prairies, it traces North American Muslims’ general sense of affective injury over the loss of Muslim life in Western military campaigns overseas.

In this context, a new theory of jihad rooted in a Muslim utopian imagination emerged, one that marked a significant rupture with premodern Islamic thought. The three ＂radicals＂ focused upon in this book were among thousands of Anglophone Muslims who found this new theory compelling as a diagnosis and solution to the violence unleashed in the War on Terror. The book examines how, why, and with what consequences for their families, friends, and Muslim community.

In so doing it highlights that post 9/11 Islamophobia has operated through the conceptual blurring of the line between the ＂moderate＂ and ＂radical＂ Muslims and asks what alternative forms of solidarity may transcend the violent boundaries of the nation-state.

Youcef Soufi is Research Fellow, Institute of Islamic Studies at the University of Toronto. He is the author of The Rise of Critical Islam: 10th-13th Century Legal Debate.